Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy

Provocations for the Early Years

E. White, E. Jayne White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780415819848
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317487630
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy presents some of the ideas of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin concerning dialogism in a way that will engage and inspire those studying early childhood education. By translating the growing body of dialogic scholarship into a practical application of teaching and learning with very young children, this book provides readers with alternative ways of examining, engaging and reflecting on practice in the early years to provoke new ways of understanding and enacting pedagogy.

This text combines important theoretical ideas with a practical application to support practitioners who are keen to promote creativity and agency through ethical self-other relations. It provides unique insights into the amazing world of the youngest child, and offers enriched understandings of the profound impact of adults in their journey of becoming (or bildung).

Key points covered include:

• Investigating dialogic philosophy and its application to early childhood education, with an emphasis on notions of justice, democracy, ethics and answerability
• Considering the relationship between dialogism and pedagogical approaches
• Theorising a range of approaches to relevant early childhood practice, as pedagogy

This accessible and readable guide offers sound theoretical principles with practical suggestions for early years' settings. The book is supplemented by an extensive online video resource website that will bring these revolutionary ideas to life.

1 Towards Dialogism

DOI: 10.4324/9781315710006-1

By now you may have realised that the term dialogism is laden with meanings that expand well beyond the study of dialogue as merely a verbal exchange. While language is indeed central to Bakhtin’s thinking, his ideas concerning dialogism are not merely related to the study of verbal conversation and its composition – though such investigation is certainly an important part of his work. Nor are they simply an addon to other dialogic theories that exist in the work of educationalists. This opening chapter sets the scene for an encounter with dialogism that spans a large part of the last century. Like the ideas he explored over his lifetime, you will discover how Bakhtin’s ideas deepen as a result of his willingness to think across disciplines and philosophies during an unrivalled historical era of political change. Beginning with an overview of his fascinating life spanning 80 years in Soviet Russia, this chapter attempts to examine the complex background to what has now come to be known as Bakhtin’s overarching theory of dialogism. The central tenets of this theory will be briefly introduced to establish some of the important themes of Bakhtin’s work. They are by no means the sum total of all that Bakhtin has to offer but they do set the scene for the particular approach to dialogic pedagogy that underpins this book.

I hope that by the time you have finished this chapter you will realise that Bakhtin’s original orientation is towards a philosophy of human development rather than a more rigid psychological or educational approach. Bakhtin raises a persistent philosophical question again and again throughout his texts concerning human consciousness which forms the basis of what we have come to describe as a particular type of dialogic theory:

The position occupied by consciousness while creating an image of the other and while creating an image of one’s own self. At the present time this is the central problem of all philosophy.

(Entry in wartime notebooks by Bakhtin, published in 1992, cited in Emerson, 1994, pp. 206–226)

Bakhtin’s quest is therefore not to set about creating a theory that will provide answers but, instead, to raise provocations about the assumptions each person brings to their relationships with others and the consequences of these. You may be left with more questions than answers about the nature of learning, what should be learnt and how it ought to be taught, but this is not Bakhtin’s quest. Instead you will be introduced to some of Bakhtin’s key ideas that offer fresh provocations for early education concerning relationships, interpretation, ‘other’ and the profound task of living in an uncertain, polyphonic world. To understand the origin of this philosophical approach I begin with a brief biography of Bakhtin, followed by an introduction to the ideas that underpin his ideas concerning dialogism. I hope that by understanding a little about Bakhtin and the world in which his ideas developed you will gain important insights into his unique approach to dialogism, and why an expanded view of pedagogy plays such a central role to his thinking. As you work your way through this chapter it may be helpful to take note of key terms and associated ideas that emerge. Many of them may be new or unfamiliar to you. But you will revisit these time and time again throughout this book so it is worth taking a bit of time to understand the provocative role each of these ideas plays in thinking about dialogic pedagogy and all that it might mean for the early years.

The life of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975)

Caryl Emerson (1995), one of the people responsible for bringing Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas to the West, believes that “a major thinker [such as Bakhtin] deserves to be known in his genesis” (p. 107). Since his death in 1975 many people have tried to claim the ‘real’ Bakhtin, only to discover the many loopholes that lie in their wake. I do not make any such claim but, instead, attempt to piece together identified fragments from Bakhtin’s life as a means of trying to locate the ideas in time and space. For this reason it is important to begin at the beginning of Bakhtin’s long life on 16 November 1895 in the town of Orel, south of Moscow, in the Russian Empire. His childhood was spent in Vilnius and Odessa where he was the second in a family of five children. At nine years of age Bakhtin contracted a serious case of osteomyelitis, a bone infection that led to the amputation of his right leg 33 years later. The lifelong pain he suffered as a result must have been excruciating and perhaps explains why his work, especially in the early years, places a great deal of emphasis on the body.

Born to parents who held liberal views and the means to instil these in their children through education, Bakhtin enrolled as a ‘free attendant’ (someone who attends lectures but does not complete exams) at Novorossjskjj University in Odessa (1913–1916) and then at the University of Petrograd (1916–1918) where he studied classics and philology. Though it is uncertain if he ever graduated (some scholars even suggest he lied about his qualifications) both subjects are evident throughout his lingering emphasis on the relationship between literature and language, words and their meanings.

Bakhtin was also a teacher for a good part of his life – working at the Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute in Saransk for many years as Department Head of World Literature. In his classrooms he was able to bring both interests together and engage his students in many lively encounters with text and each other’s ideas. It is perhaps unsurprising that his students held him in high esteem – the efforts they went to in order to preserve his ideas in adverse situations are testimony to this fact.

It is important to understand the political situation in which Bakhtin found himself at various points in his life. Many of Bakhtin’s friends were executed for their beliefs during the Soviet Union’s totalitarian years (the 1930s and ’40s) when ideas were closely controlled by the state. It is hardly surprising that one of Bakhtin’s most important ideas concerning monologism and heteroglossia (described in Russian in terms such as raznorechie, raznogolosie and raznojazyie) conveys the message that any thought or act that has ultimate supremacy over others, shuts them down or denies their right to speak stifles all forms of creativity and life. This idea was to form the basis of Bakhtin’s emphasis on culture as a boundary concept. By this he meant that culture only exists when experienced alongside ‘other’; without ‘other’ Bakhtin believed that culture was dead because it had no lived meaning – a dangerous idea in the Soviet Union at this time. It has been surmised that Bakhtin escaped a tragic death only because of his ability to write in riddle or to contradict ideas. Other scholars suggest it is due to the vigilance of those around him, who sought to protect him and his ideas.

Even with such strategies Bakhtin did not escape being sentenced to exile on Solovetsky Island in the arctic seas of northwestern Russia for a short period following his arrest in 1929 on the charge that he was engaged in an underground Russian Orthodox Church movement. Whether or not this is true remains a mystery, but we do know that he actually served his sentence in Kustanai, Kazakhstan. His deteriorating health kept Bakhtin in Kustanai even after he had completed his sentence, and it was during this 11-year period that several of his key texts were conceived.

Although initially rejected at a doctoral candidate degree level in 1946, Bakhtin’s doctoral thesis – on laughter – was subsequently awarded a PhD in English in 1952. However, under the repressive regime of the 1940s and early ’50s, he could do very little to promote his work outside of the classroom. Indeed, had it not been for a group of his students discovering his manuscripts and publishing them in the period known as ‘the Khrushchev thaw’, you might not be reading this book. The remarkable humility of Bakhtin, the man, is underscored by his equally remarkable life – a life that was lived as a thinker who played with ideas and, somewhat ironically, answered to no one.

Bakhtin’s writing first arrived on the scene in the West in 1968. By this time his thesis was not only published in English, but some of his work had also been translated into Italian and French – establishing an international thirst for more. The gradual introduction of his texts over subsequent years meant that his ideas were now accessible to many parts of the world, except Russia where his work was not formally published until 1979 and even then as heavily censored fragments. By his death in 1975 Bakhtin had become internationally renowned – serving as a symbol of post-Stalinist hope and optimism in an increasingly diverse and globalised world – yet he never saw his work celebrated in his own country. His continued influence reflects the strength of his work not so much in finding solutions or creating theories, but in its examination of, and response to, serious philosophical problems that are still relevant today.

Bakhtin's key informants

Reading Bakhtin can be challenging for a number of reasons. One is that he does not stick to one discipline or consistent philosophical orientation; instead he is somewhat of a two-faced Janus because his work is often located at the intersections, or boundaries, between ideas. By this I mean that he looks one way towards his formalist Kantian heritage and the other to poststructuralist thought – never settling in one place or the other completely. I concur with Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan’s (1997) explanation of Bakhtin’s work and its location “not in its neat dovetailing into postmodernism, but in a self-conscious threshold position, that is, its fundamental unresolved ambivalence” (p. 252). A further frustration is that his texts are not necessarily neatly finished. Indeed, as I mention earlier, he was not always responsible for their publication. The stories of his manuscripts make for interesting reading – some used as paper for cigarettes, others lost and yet others compiled by his students in later years. As a result, much of his work is in fragments that make them challenging to read. His ideas, read in isolation and often out of order, do not seem to follow a logical sequence, repeating many of the same thoughts through different routes over time.

It is also not always clear that you in fact are reading Bakhtin. Like several other scholars of his era, Bakhtin was notorious for borrowing ideas from writers, poets and philosophers he had met or read about. He has been described, perhaps not altogether unfairly, as a master plagiariser because he does not always fully acknowledge the contributions of others in his writing. However, of known and substantial significance to his theory of dialogism are several German philosophers including Kant and the poet Goethe, Russian writer Dostoevsky and French writer Rabelais to name a few. Each, in their own way, played a shaping role in the development of Bakhtin’s work – as antagonists or collaborators alike – with apologies to those many others who have not made it to these pages.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832): An orientation that Bakhtin developed towards the idea of interpretation through and with ‘other’ was deeply implicated by the German poet and philosopher Goethe. In particular, Bakhtin was very influenced by Goethe’s notion that one should give way to the work of the eye as a means of understanding. Goethe’s notion of ‘great time’ – one that takes account of the past, present and future was to form the basis for his own theory of visual surplus drawing on the German concept of Bildungsroman, or becoming (White, 2014a). The idea that seeing is an authorial gift to ‘other’ is enshrined in Bakhtin’s notions of answerability (otvetstvennost) and authorship – both of which we explore later in this chapter.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): Kant was responsible for Bakhtin’s emphasis on the moral aspects of human behaviour and the importance of context on how this is viewed. Bakhtin was also heavily influenced by members of the neo-Kantian Marburg School, such as Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer, and most especially those who reacted against their ideas (including Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche). Bakhtin’s good friend, Matvei Kagan, was a student from the Marburg School. Through these important dialogues Bakhtin was able to go beyond what he saw as a very limiting Kantian view of morality when considered as a universal concept. For Bakhtin there was always an opportunity to move past any imperative ‘norms’ or ‘oughts’ because it was possible for individuals to take concrete steps beyond their present way of being in response to others. Here originates the ideas of ‘self-other’ and ethics we discuss in chapter 4, and of postupok – a concept we will explore in detail in chapter 5.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881): A well-known Russian novelist from the 1800s, Dostoevsky wrote in a way that avoided speaking on behalf of his characters. Bakhtin was tantalised by this artistic device, called polyphony. He devoted one whole book to this and related ideas called Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1984). Dostoevsky’s own writing often focused on human suffering. His attention to emotions such as love and pain probably made sense to Bakhtin, who placed heavy emphasis on human acts in his early work. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics was the first of Bakhtin’s books to be published, not long before his arrest in 1929. We explore emotion specifically in chapter 4 and revisit polyphony time and time again throughout this book.

François Rabelais (1494–1553): Central to Bakhtin’s thesis on laughter was the writing of French humanist François Rabelais. Writing about Middle Age peasant culture and the influence of Renaissance on its legitimacy, Rabelais provided Bakhtin with a context through which he could expand his thinking by introducing a genre called carnivalesque. In this genre officialdom is suspended in order to unsettle authoritative dogma. Laughter is a primary source of language utilised in carnivalesque as a kind of de-crowning of hierarchy and power (Bakhtin, 1968). Here Bakhtin’s consideration of discourse flourished – providing a means of exploring alternative ideas in an era...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of video footage
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Towards dialogism
• 2 Introducing dialogic pedagogy
• 3 Dialogic pedagogy in the early years
• 4 Teaching with love
• 5 Teaching and play
• 6 Teaching and laughter
• 7 Teaching and accountability
• 8 Dialogic provocations
• Glossary
• Index